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FreeBSD 4.10 Released
lorand writes "After some delay (initially scheduled to be released on May 5th) the long awaited 4.10 version of FreeBSD was released today. It features a large merge of the USB code from the -CURRENT development branch, some conservative updates to a number of programs in the base system and many bugfixes. The detailed release notes can be found here. Use one of the many mirrors
if you need to get the ISOs."
feargal adds "There are no sweeping changes from 4.9, mostly a consolidation of security and bug fixes.
Looking forward, it is also the first in a new 'Errata Branch' which increases the scope of fixes applied. In the past only critical security fixes were applied to the release branch. The Errata branch will include local DoS fixes and well-tested non-security fixes."
We're not a million miles away from seeing them put 5.3 out of the door, which will then become -STABLE I believe.
Lot of nice things being sorted out in the FreeBSD kernel. I can't wait until the conversation starts about what's going into 6.x
Been running 5.1 since it first came out.
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meyerdg@swr999:~/bin/xterms
$ uname -a
FreeBSD swr999 5.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE #2: Mon Nov 24 08
root@swr999:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/SPECIFIC i386
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It's been rock solid in many respects, but there have been some (not so) small details which make me want to switch back to Linux.
- Sound card doesn't work, but that may very well be my own shortfall.
- Vesa mode console is not supported on my video card, but works like a charm under linux. (this relates to a problem switching between X and console mode causing lockups in both BSD and Linux)
There are some packages which don't work for whatever reason which I find extremely useful, xxdiff for one..
I've started migrating back to Linux, but not too far away.. Debian testing is my choice these days. A bit less stable but everything works.
I'd like to get FreeBSD going on my laptop but I've had trouble with the cardbus ethernet adapters. Can anyone recommend a 16 Bit PCMCIA ethernet for use with FreeBSD? Too bad there are no sites like Linux-Laptop for BSD. As far as BSD dying, spend some time dealing with various non-responsive Linux package maintainers and then say who is dead.
I love FreeBSD, but could those uptimes be because some load balancer/front ends run a BSD variant? Maybe that's the uptime we are seeing, not the actual server's.
No sig
its even better, any linux box up for over 400 days shows as being rebooted due to some clock's roll over.
PS: can BSD load a new kernel without rebooting? if so great, if not, look a list of BSD machines to break into.
you can use netcraft to search for linux/windows boxs the same way, if it hasn't rebooted since a patch/kernel update that needs a reboot, then you have an open machine.
No, I am not talking about FreeBSD. I am talking about me deciding to perform a 'cvsup' on RELENG_4 last night. Little did I know that I was getting the newest release.
I have numerous friends who use FreeBSD, many because of me. More are coming. My webhost uses FreeBSD and the new one I'm switching to does as well. In fact, most of the sites with the longest uptime run FreeBSD or some *BSD.
The supported hardware is broader than the list suggests, because the list is mostly by chipsets. You'll find LOTS of different products that all use the same chipset. I've found that if you're unsure, just ask... people in the community will help you figure it out. I got a video-capture card for xmas that has worked like a charm. Watching TV in a box on my desktop is nice. I've watched DVDs, had no problems with my sound, get hardware-accel 3D on my video card, network card has always worked, as well as my wireless mouse. All the rest of my hardware besides the video-capture card is the same stuff I had when I ran Windows 2000 (which I bought without knowing I'd be ditching Windows for FreeBSD) and it all worked great when I switched. The ports system kicks ass. Upgrading is a cinch. The OS is very stable. I'm happy.
>BSD is dying, yet they keep on releasing new stuff.
...) Even apt-get doesn't compare with /usr/ports.
:-(
And we keep on using it. There's no better platform for avoiding library skew (dll-hell, rpm dependencies,
We do have fewer and fewer machines running FreeBSD though, because of poor support for Java/Tomcat, lack of iSCSI, and decrepit NFS. Ever try to setup an NFS-IMAP server with 100MB+ quotas and maildir? Can't do it in FreeBSD
R7
I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it. But I still would like to use it, it feels very consistent, and the fact that it doesn't suffer from the "distributions" disease adds up to that.
Coming from a Debian background, my main complaint (and reason that I resist using it) is that, AFAIK, it doesn't have a large repository of binary packages for installation. I know about the wonders of Ports, but I feel like it is something for users with time and resources on their hands, which I do not have - I don't like the idea of having to wait sometimes hours for something to compile, so I can use it. This time could be better spent actually doing something useful with my computer, rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.
I'm aware that Debian has two BSDs ports (NetBSD and FreeBSD), but they are far from maturity right now. For myself, I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations, so FreeBSD is already out of the game here. For server installations, however, I could go without, although it would still be useful. So I'd like to know if there's a reliable and updated repository (i.e. packages website a la linuxpackages.net, for slackware) that FreeBSD users use to get binary packages.
Don't take this post as a troll, I'm really interested on FreeBSD and would like to have some solid reasons to use it.
It's the other way around for me. I'm Migrating from Debian to FreeBSD. Mostly because Debian is so unstable/outdated. I have found that everything in FreeBSD just works. I'm running FreeBSD stable with the latest server packages. I can't do that in Debian, unless I want to configure and compile everything manually. The Ports system makes it so easy that I don't think I'll every switch back.
The above is not worth reading.
funny ... bsd terminology is so pervasive. I have hard time speaking in terms of extended and logical partitions, for slices make more sense now. I also found myself referring to linux 2.4.x as their stable branch (without any intention to suggest that 2.6.x is not stable). OTOH it wasn't very easy at first to see how all those branches and releases work - now it is linux that confuses me (Is there a 2.7.x 'branch' yet? - I can't wait for their console driver to be fixed :P).
I use both 4.x and 5.x
Interestingly, I currently run 5.x on my main server and 4.9 on my workstation.
I'm not running 4.9 out of conservatism or anything like that, but simply for the reason that I don't have time to bother with the current issues regarding the nvidia drivers and multi-threading.
My server runs 5.x because its rock solid and does a good job taking advantage of the smp hardware.
Once I don't have to bother with the linux-threads port to get a working form of kernel scheduling for threads with the nvidia driver or have to stick to libc_r, I'll switch back to 5.x on my workstation. (and yes, I know I'm stuck with libc_r now when using 4.9, but at least I don't have to bother keeping it that way while recompiling updates and such)
(oh, and why not use the xfree nvidia driver? because I want opengl for playing enemy territory and the like... not very important really, but good opengl support itself is important for other desktop uses)
I am a Mac OS X user too, but my servers run on freeBSD.
Why? Because freeBSD runs on very inexpensive hardware. I don't have the budget to get Xserves here, and all the Powermac G4s are tied up as workstations. Yet I have a nice PIII rackmount that was doing nothing and now is happily running our mail services with absolutely zero hassles.
My personal server is a freeBSD jail, something I cannot get for OS X at the price that I got it.
For the record, one of the things that sold me into switching from XP Pro to OS X was that freeBSD legacy, since I had been using freeBSD for years before I even saw OS X working. freeBSD is anything but primitive.
Pedro
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The Insomniac Coder
IMHO, BSD's jail() is one of the more interesting developments in recent versions -- at least for an internet service provider.
For those of you unfamiliar, check it out. It's very much like User Mode Linux and allows running virtual servers within a larger server. Many colocation/virtual server providers (e.g. take, your, pick) use FreeBSD jails to provide low-cost root-access hosts for customers. This really has revolutionized cost effectiveness of large scale hosting!
There have been various limitations with FreeBSD jails when they first appeared. There were glitches with information leaking across jails. There's a limit to a single IP address, inability to do raw socket operations or even ping/traceroute, and some glitches with a couple system calls used by major applications like Postfix.
But my understanding is that 5.x seriously improves jail support, especially from a resource efficiency perspective. One of my BSD developer buddies also tells me that he's fixing raw socket support. Keep an eye on the jail feature...
What I like about the 4.x releases is pretty minor, but the package management on the install cd's is still gzip, whereas in the 5.x release its bzip2. Some of us choose to run FreeBSD on older computers with little ram, like 32M, and gzip decompresses almost infinately faster than bzip2. Long live the 4.x tree.
I don't want to get into a flamewar (i think they're silly) but this portion seems a bit misinformed:
Yeah. Remind me of one "flaky driver" or "questionable stuff" that was recently added to a stable Linux kernel release. The 2.4 maintainer is EXTREMELY hesitant to include anything new, to the point of frustrating people (see XFS).
Linux 2.4 changed its VM subsystem, and its scheduler in the middle of the 2.4 branch. They worked, but the "extremely hesitant to include anything new" label doesn't fit. The fact that these changes worked will little ill effect cause a lot of people not to remember these. Linux 2.4 also shipped with a corruption bug in it's default filesystem (ext3) in a common (though not default) journal mode.
These are not attacks against Linux, I use it at work, have used it for years. Just it does have a different development model. Kindly stop the "my freely developed x86 UNIX workalike is SO much better than your freely developed x86 UNIX workalike" arguments. Very silly, and we have better battles to fight.
I have used Linux since 98 and FreeBSD since 2002.
/etc is a godsend under BSD.
/etc symlinked to god knows where that are written in Bash like in Linux. Just simple RC files that have things like #uncomment this line to enable this.
/etc/defaults/make.conf.
Yes, there is a certain feel and polish to the BSD's that are reminiscent of Unix. Linux in recent years has gone down the tubes in terms of beta and alpha level packages thrown in distros.
I am typing this from SuSE 9.1 right now because I dont have time to tinker with everything to set it up FreeBSD as a workstation.
But dont take make my word on it. Try it and use the FreeBSD handbook?
It feels certainly more stable and the
No complicated psuedo files in
That makes my life 10x easier to administrate.
I also can tweak gcc by using
If only it had the right fonts, universal menu's and codecs by default it would be awesome.
As a SuSE user there is no way in hell would I trust it to a server. I have crashed the distro many times and have seen 2 kernel panics in just the week since I owned it. Xine is very buggy too. All the characters sometime turn grey and only red shows when I play a video now?? wtf?
Also I can't play a certain mp3 with xmms without it crashing and its now impossible to run off the opengl spectrum analyzer without crashing xmms again. I just discovered during the course of writing this message.
God Linux is a piece of crap. I may have to reboot to get it to work again. Hmmm now which os does that remind you of?
At least Windows2k and WindowsXP are now fairly stable. More then Linux as of today in my opinion. Boy, have times chages.
It pains me to say that.
http://saveie6.com/
Hey there!
Well, I ran linux 2.6 on the server for the remainder of the semester for my users.
I later upgraded to FBSD 5.2.1, after realizing that it was stable enough for us. I ran 5.X on a test server (still running it there) for 6 months without problems (doing semi-production stuff); I felt this warranted putting it on one more server.
Then, suddenly, I got asked to install FBSD on more servers.. Yay! My university is installing FreeBSD more often now (well, I am at least).